Tut Teams With Broadcom On Home Networking

Electronic News, Feb 15, 1999 by Arik Hesseldahl

New York -- Home Networking's standard bearer, Tut Systems, announced last week that it is teaming up with Broadcom on a new networking technology that uses in-home phone lines to build networks running at speeds of up to 10 MB per second.

The two companies said the technology, called MediaShare, will eventually be able so scale up to speeds of 60 MB per second.

The move is Broadcom's first into the home networking space, a potential market that is expected to grow considerably as the number of multi-PC households grows. Broadcom, based in Irvine, Calif., makes chips for DSL products, cable modems and local area networks.

The new partnership was the first strategic move by Pleasant Hills, Calif.-based Tut since its IPO late last month. The current 1.0 standard of home phoneline networking is based on Tut's HomeRun technology. Both Broadcom and Tut are members of the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance.

"As the number of homes with multiple PCs grows more than twice as fast as the overall penetration rate of PCs, the opportunity for networks in the home becomes increasingly significant. There are already over 800,000 homes in the U.S. which have installed networks to communicate among computers, other types of devices and peripherals," said Kevin Hause, an analyst at International Data Corp. "In 1999, we expect over 80% of U.S. in-home networking nodes to be based on phone line technology."

Breaking the 10 MB per second barrier is significant because it will allow a broader use of the technology, for such applications as video, than is currently possible at 1 Mb per second, which is sufficient for peripheral-sharing and PC-to-PC file-sharing.

"This technology is key to the widespread use of new classes of IP consumer devices within the home, while maintaining compatibility with a large legacy installed base," said Broadcom CEO Henry T. Nicholas. "MediaShare is a driving force behind seamless interoperability of phoneline, powerline and wireless networks in multi-tiered home networks of the future."

The next definition of the standard, which Tut is in the running to define, will cover the higher speed. A second firm, Sunnyvale-based Epigram, is also is also developing a 10 MB per second home networking technology.